


Spell Me Out

by Pun



Category: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 11:19:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8888830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pun/pseuds/Pun
Summary: Ari goes to deliver a message. Dante goes with him.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tillunwish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tillunwish/gifts).



**One**

I didn’t have any dreams the night before the trip. When I woke up the sun wasn’t really up yet. The sky was pink with dawn light, and there was that stillness about the house that makes you feel like the creak of the floor as you step on the loose board just outside the bathroom door is loud as a thunderclap. 

I put the truck into reverse without starting the ignition and just let it roll backwards out of the driveway. My mom and dad knew I was leaving and where I was going, so technically I wasn’t sneaking out. Maybe I was deliberately leaving before they were awake just because I didn’t want to have to go through the same painful arguments with them again.

Dante’s mom greeted me at the door when I got to their house, baby Javy asleep on her shoulder. She was wearing a bathrobe that was blue with a red floral print belted tightly around her waist.

She said, “Good morning, Ari,” and gave me a kiss on the cheek, and the smell of milk and baby powder enveloped me.

I knew that she knew where we were going, but I couldn’t tell if she approved or not. Her face was inscrutable as usual. “You’re going to have to go get Dante out of bed,” she said softly. 

Dante was asleep on his side facing the door when I walked into his bedroom. His skin was darker from a summer spent outside at the pool. “Makes me look more Mexican,” he’d said and elbowed me a little. He knew it got on my nerves, his hangups about being Mexican. 

I patted him on his bare shoulder. He murmured a few words of protest and buried his face in the pillow without opening his eyes.

“Come on, Dante. I want to get on the road,” I said. 

“Ari?” he turned and a smile of painful warmth and tenderness spread across his face. “Hi, Ari.” His voice was scratchy from sleep and full of so much love and sweetness. Even after a year of being together I didn’t always know what to do with all that love directed at me. I was getting better at not looking away, usually, but on that morning I had to. 

I started to turn away, but he grabbed my arm. 

“Don’t you know you’re supposed to wake me with a kiss?” he asked, his smile turning mischievous.

“You’re not a princess. And you’re already awake.” 

Dante laughed, but he kept hold of my hand, pulling until I gave in and leaned in. I meant to only give him a peck on the lips, but he wrapped his other arm around my shoulders and pulled me down on top of him.

His tongue slipped into my mouth, warm and soft, and he was rubbing the side of my face with his hand. The sheet was between us, but I could feel that underneath he was naked and hard. 

He began to rock his hips, pressing into me, and I broke the kiss. 

“I was dreaming about you,” he gasped. 

His voice like that, breathy and harsh and just for me always got to me. It curled down my spine and then went lower, making me feel a warm throbbing need to pull Dante closer and get more pressure there, but I forced myself to pull away and stand up.

“Your mother’s awake,” I said.

“So we’ll be really quiet.”

I snorted. 

“I can be quiet,” he said, “and quick.” 

He sat up so the sheet pooled around his waist, white against his skin which I thought was now the shade of old parchment, of a book that was ancient and sacred that I would like to read. I’d gotten Dante to do some weights with me, and the definition was really starting to show in his abs.

I dragged my eyes back up to meet Dante’s. “I’m going to wait for you downstairs. Be down in fifteen minutes, or I’m leaving without you.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Probably not, but don’t test me.” 

“Fine. I’ll be down just as soon as I take care of my friend here.” He slipped his hand under the sheet. 

I wasn’t sure if he was serious, but I didn’t stay to find out. 

*

**Two**

 

I flipped on the radio as soon as Dante got in the car. “Love Shack” was playing, and I changed the station even though I knew Dante liked the song. I kept flipping around until I found a station playing Spanish music.

“Si voy a pederte ya,” Gloria Estefan was singing. 

Dante reached over and turned it off. 

“Hey, I like that song,” I said, and switched it back on.

Dante just settled back in his seat and said, “Okay, Ari.” 

I gritted my teeth and fought the urge to turn down the music myself to ask him what was going on. I should have been happy to win the argument, but we both knew that Dante didn’t normally give up that easily. 

There was a fist squeezing my stomach, and another one squeezing my heart. I knew Dante wasn’t really the reason, but he was the easiest target. He knew how important this trip was to me, and he shouldn’t have been pushing me to do stuff with him when I came to pick him up. 

We had done some stuff below the waist, of course. I’d taken to keeping an old sleeping bag in my truck, and most weekends we found some time to drive out to our spot in the desert. But I still felt strange thinking of myself as an object of desire, as someone who made Dante feel things I wasn’t sure I was comfortable feeling myself.

We were out past the city limits with nothing but cactuses out the window by the time my old favorite, the Los Lobos version of “La Bamba” came on.

“Por ti seré, por ti seré,” Dante sang along softly in harmony. Normally, I liked Dante’s singing, but right then it seemed like one more thing that came so easily to him. Like getting along with his parents. Like having a baby brother. Like being interested in sex.

I switched the radio off. 

We rode in silence for awhile, but Dante wasn’t so good at silence. “You’re mad at me because I masturbated thinking about you this morning,” he said.

I gripped the wheel tighter. I wanted to shout. I wanted to slam on the breaks and take him back to El Paso. Instead I said, “I don’t see why we have to talk about it.” 

“I don’t see why you don’t take it as a compliment. You should be mad if I masturbated thinking of Seth Mecklenburg.” 

Seth was on the swim team with Dante. He had blond hair and a hooked nose and really broad shoulders. Seth’s lips were also really puffy, now that I thought about it, and his hands were big, but his fingers were slim like an artist’s, like Dante’s, and I was willing to bet he never smelled like hamburger grease.

“Have you?” I asked. It came out sharper and angrier than I intended. 

Dante laughed, “No, of course not. But would it matter if I had? It’s just the imagination.”

I switched the radio back on.

*

The sun was brutally hot, beating down from directly overhead, and I was starving. We were stopped at a gas station outside Fort Stockton. There was a jar of Slim Jims by the register. I grabbed a fistful and paid for them with my gas. 

When I got back in the cab of the truck Dante was flipping through a book. 

I tossed him a Slim Jim. He wrinkled his nose. “Aren’t we going to take the opportunity of being on a road trip to sample the local cuisine?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

 

*

**Three**

We stopped for the night at a motel on the outskirts of San Antonio. We had a six pack of beer and a pile of barbecue in takeout containers sitting between us on the motel bed. I was exhausted from so many hours of driving. When I closed my eyes, it felt like I was still moving, and I’d jerk myself awake, thinking I was falling asleep at the wheel. 

“Do you think he’ll see you?” Dante asked.

“I think I’ll have another beer,” I said.

Dante sighed and just looked at me. His eyes looked sad. I reached over him and pulled another beer from the box. Our forearms brushed as I shifted back into my spot.

“I just don’t want you to be disappointed,” Dante said.

“You sound like my mom.”

“Sometimes you should listen to your mother, Ari.”

“Now you _really_ sound like her,” I said, and we both cracked up.

Dante took a few more sips of his beer, and then he said, “I can’t believe we get to sleep in a bed together the whole night through!” His eyes ran up and down my body, and I shivered.

*

After we ate Dante showered first, and then I took my turn.

I spent longer than I normally would under the spray thinking about what we might do when I came out. I felt nervous, but there was at least one part of my body that seemed to know exactly what it wanted. 

When I came out of the shower, Dante had pulled back the bedspread, and he was lying naked on the sheets, his legs were slightly spread, and I could see all of him, the arches of his feet, and the round curve of his thighs, the jut of his hip bones, his ribs, his long neck, and full mouth, and his eyes watching me, always looking at me like I was something special, like he expected I was going to do something great, and he didn’t want to miss it. It felt really good but also scary. I wanted to live up to that belief in me. 

And then my eyes went back between his legs where one hand lay lightly on top of his hard, flushed cock.

“Ari,” he said, and his voice were full of something so raw, so close to sadness, that I rushed to the bed. I couldn’t get my arms around him fast enough. 

We were kissing, and Dante’s hands were all over me, touching me everywhere, stroking my chest, and holding my face, grabbing my arms squeezing hard enough to leave bruises. It was like being inside a rainstorm, consuming and blinding and unstoppable. Everything just kept rushing forward, and all I could do was move with Dante, open myself up to him and let the pleasure build as we rocked together until he brought his hand down to where I needed it most. 

His grip was hot and tight around me, and all I could do was cry out, calling out my love for him and all the pleasure and the pain that it brought me.

*  
**Four**

I had been worried about finding the turnoff to the prison, but there was a sign. It was white with black lettering that said “Darrington Men’s Prison” and a red arrow pointing down a dusty dirt road.

We continued down it for about a mile, passing nothing but scrub and lizards until we came to a huge fence with razor wire coiled menacingly all along the top.

“Are you sure you’re ready?” Dante asked.

“I’m not going to turn back now.”

He grabbed my hand, and when I didn’t look at him, he put his hand on my cheek and gently turned my face toward his.

“You could, Ari. You know that you could. Don’t do this because you think you have to.”

I knew what he was trying to say, but I’d come that far, and the desire to see my brother was stronger than the fear of what might happen. I knew that if I turned back then, I’d wonder for the rest of my life. One thing learning about my brother had taught me was that it was better to know the truth, even when it was something terrible.

*

A visitor’s room at a prison, it turns out, looks a lot like a school lunchroom. I hadn’t known what to expect, but the cracked linoleum floors, the antiseptic smell, and the blue and orange plastic chairs were all bizarrely familiar. 

There were a few other people in the visiting room. We had been warned that prisoners would be led out one by one and that they would start putting people back in their cells at 2:45pm sharp. 

Most of the other visitors were women with children in their arms or holding their hands, looking varying degrees of frightened or bored. I tried to imagine what it would have been like for me, if my mom had taken me to see Bernardo when I was still a little kid, what I would have made of the heavy doors that slam shut behind you, and the dogs with their sharp teeth, and the guards with their loud voices and cruel stares. 

I had been afraid that I wouldn’t even recognize him, or that he wouldn’t recognize me, that if some day Bernardo got released from prison, we could walk right by each other and never know it. On the other hand, I tended to fantasize that my brother would still look exactly the same, that the guy from the pictures I had been looking through over and over again for the past year would now be in the flesh before me. 

As I guess is usually the case, the reality was somewhere in between. I did recognize Bernardo right away, instantly, and when he met my eyes I could tell that he knew me too, but he wasn’t exactly the handsome, angry young man who looked out at me from the photographs. His face was puffier, and there were bags under his eyes and some lines on his forehead. 

His hands and feet were cuffed, and a guard led him over to our table and pulled a chair out for him so that he could sit down. 

We just looked at each other for a minute. There was no touching allowed, but I don’t know if we would have hugged or shook hands or anything even if we could have. 

The sleeves of his orange jumpsuit were rolled up, so that I could see the large interlocking T and S inked on his left forearm. I could see there was a word tattooed on the inside of his right wrist as well, but all I could see was an N and an A. 

Eventually, Bernardo broke the silence, saying, “Ari. It’s really you.”

I didn’t know what to say. I just nodded and said his name. “Bernardo.” 

“This is a hell of a way to spend your 18th birthday, Ari,” he said. 

“You remembered,” I said. 

“Yeah, course I remembered. Not gonna forget my own little brother’s birthday, man.” 

I thought about the fact that my brother was younger than I was at that moment when he went to prison. That in another couple years, he’d have spent more of his life in prison than out. I had spent so much time preparing for this moment, and now I didn’t know what to say to him. 

He was the one who broke the silence again. “You still in school? You get good grades?”

“Yeah. I graduated this spring. I’m going to start classes at UTEP in a couple weeks.” 

Bernardo nodded at that. He had been watching me really closely, but then her looked over at Dante. “Who’s this?” he indicated Dante with a jerk of the chin. 

“This is Dante.”

“Dante? Weird name, dude.” He was studying Dante now, and he’d shifted forward in his seat in a way that made the hairs on my arm prick up.

“It’s no weirder than Aristotle,” I said.

Bernardo ignored me. His eyes narrowed and he said, “So, Dante, what’s your deal?”

“I’m a friend of Ari’s.” 

I could have let that be, but the whole point of the trip was for me to know my brother, for my brother to know me. 

“He’s my best friend.” I reached out and took Dante’s hand. “My boyfriend, actually.” 

Even after a year of being together, even though I’d told Dante I loved him multiple times, I’d never called him my boyfriend out loud before. It felt good, like a lock had clicked open and released a band I hadn’t known was constricting my heart, but at the same moment that I was feeling relief I could see the look of shock and disgust on my brother’s face as what I said registered for him. 

“Tu eres maricón?” he hissed.

Dante sucked in a breath, and he pushed his chair back from the table like he was getting ready to run from the room. I could feel the air take on a charge around me, but I felt calm, like I was in the cab of my truck while a storm raged outside. I didn’t break eye contact with my brother, and I gripped Dante’s hand tighter.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I’m a faggot, and I love Dante. I wanted you to meet him because I wanted you to know that I’m all right, and that I’m happy, and that I’m also sad because I miss you every day. I think of you and miss you all the time, every day, and I wish that you were around to teach me things about growing up and about how to be a man.” 

I looked over at Dante, and tears were running silently down his face. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that we’d go to visit my brother, and Dante would be the one who ended up crying. 

“We put your picture up in the living room. The one of you saluting Dad in his uniform. Mom had taken down all the pictures of you, but then last year we framed that one and put it up in the living room. And also, I love you. Those were the things I wanted you to know,” I told him. 

Bernardo shook his head. “I can’t believe you’re a fucking faggot.” 

“Okay, we can go now,” I said to Dante and stood up.

I turned back to Bernardo and told him, “When I think of more things I want you to know I’m going to write to you. And I hope that some day you’ll write to me too because I want to know you, and I want you back in my life even if you hate me for being gay. I still want to know you because you’re my brother.” 

Bernardo didn’t say anything back. He just kept looking at me with anger and disgust in his eyes, and so I left.

It should have hurt, and I knew it would eventually, but right then I couldn’t feel it. Those were probably the most words I’d ever spoken at a time, and it was like each one had been a heavy weight on me that I had released by speaking it. I felt unbearably light, like if Dante weren’t gripping my hand so tightly I’d just float away.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from the Octavio Paz poem Brotherhood (Hermandad):  
> I am a man: little do I last  
> and the night is enormous.  
> But I look up:  
> the stars write.  
> Unknowing I understand:  
> I too am written,  
> and at this very moment  
> someone spells me out. 
> 
> Soy hombre: duro poco  
> y es enorme la noche.  
> Pero miro hacia arriba:  
> las estrellas escriben.  
> Sin entender comprendo:  
> también soy escritura  
> y en este mismo instante  
> alguien me deletrea.


End file.
